The creation of Mount Rushmore is a story of struggle -- and to some,
desecration. The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota Sioux, the
original occupants of the area when white settlers arrived. For some,
the four presidents carved in the hill are not without negative
symbolism. The Sioux have never had much luck dealing with white men.

In the Treaty of 1868, the
U.S. government promised the Sioux territory that included the Black
Hills in perpetuity. Perpetuity lasted only until gold was found in the
mountains and prospectors migrated there in the 1870s. The federal
government then forced the Sioux to relinquish the Black Hills portion
of their reservation.

These events fit the pattern
of the late nineteenth century, a time of nearly constant conflict
between the American government and Plains Indians. At his second
presidential inauguration in 1873, Ulysses S. Grant
reflected the attitudes of many whites when he said he favored a humane
course to bring Native Americans "under the benign influences of
education and civilization. It is either this or war of extermination."
Many of the land's original occupants did not choose to assimilate; for
them war, was the only option.

In South Dakota, Sitting
Bull and Crazy Horse led various Sioux tribes against the U.S. Army.
They had a notable success against General George Armstrong Custer and
his troops, but the army's defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn in
America's centennial year, 1876, would cause the federal government to
redouble its efforts. (Some of the area in which Rushmore stands was
eventually purchased by the state of South Dakota and developed as
Custer State Park; the rest was part of the Black Hills National
Forest.) South Dakota was also the site of the last major defeat of
Native Americans at the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890.

In his bestselling 1970
history of Native Americans' experiences in the West, Bury My Heart
at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown explains that the "battle" was actually a
massacre where hundreds of unarmed Sioux women, children, and men were
shot and killed by U.S. troops. The history of Wounded Knee would spur
American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) activists to occupy the site in 1973.
They demanded the federal government honor the treaties made with
various tribes. The FBI became involved in what became known as the
Second Siege at Wounded Knee, and a tense standoff resulted in the death
of two Native Americans and injury to others on both sides. Violence
continued to erupt for several years, including a June 26, 1975
firefight on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota that ended with
the death of two FBI agents and one Native American. In a case that
continues to spur controversy, A.I.M. member Leonard Peltier was
convicted of killing the FBI agents, and sentenced to two consecutive
life sentences in prison.

In 1927, with a history of
turmoil as a background, a white man living in Connecticut came into the
Black Hills and dynamited and drilled the faces of four white men onto
Mount Rushmore. At the outset of the project,
Gutzon Borglum had persuaded South Dakota state historian
Doane Robinson the presidents would give the work national
significance, rejecting Robinson's initial suggestion that the sculpture
honor the West's greatest heroes, both Native Americans and pioneers.

The
insult of Rushmore to some Sioux is at least three-fold:

1. It was built
on land the government took from them.
2. The Black Hills in particular are considered sacred
ground.
3. The monument celebrates the European settlers who killed
so many Native Americans and appropriated their land.

To counter the white faces
of Rushmore, in 1939 Sioux Chief Henry Standing Bear invited sculptor
Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked briefly at Rushmore, to carve a memorial
to the Sioux nation in the Black Hills. Perhaps wary of Borglum's
troubles with financial administrators, Ziolkowski personally bought a
mountain top with a granite ridge and financed the entire project
privately. The statue, envisioned as a freestanding sculpture of the
great Sioux chief Crazy Horse, will be much larger than any of the
Rushmore figures. Korczak Ziolkowski died in 1982, but his family
continues to work on this awesome undertaking; Crazy Horse's face was
completed and dedicated in 1998. Although the subject of this work
addresses one aspect of Rushmore's offenses, the land is still
considered Sioux property, and the mountain that the Ziolkowskis are
carving is still sacred. The Crazy Horse monument is not without its own
dissenters and critics.

THE FIFTH FACE ON MT. RUSHMORE

In December, 1975, an Italian photographer took pictures of Mt. Rushmore. In 1976, these photos were shown on NBC's Today Show with Tom Brokaw and Jane
Pauley. Brokaw introduced the pictures as "the fifth face on Mt. Rushmore", as
seen by the Italian photographer, who discovered the Indian head illusion in
his darkroom when he got back to Italy. Tom said the image was visible only in
December when the sun's angle was just right so the chin outline could be
seen. Note the angle of George Washington's head to give an idea on what angle
to take the photo from. George is facing slightly to the left. The effect is
not seen if you are standing so that George is looking straight at you. The
angle at which the effect can be seen is very narrow.